Comparison of the Financing Structure of Industrial Clusters and Service Clusters in the World
Comparison of the Financing Structure of Industrial Clusters and Service Clusters in the World

Summary/Abstract: The sector-based (industry-based) view of the issue of supporting clusters is currently a topic that has rarely received attention within financing clusters. While there are quite a lot of studies devoted to financing clusters in general, as well as in various countries or continents, only few authors have dealt with differences between financing industrial clusters and service clusters in recent years. This is the reason why our own research was carried out, involving 1.414 clusters from Europe and North America. In this way, a unique overview of financing 167 clusters in this area was obtained. These clusters were divided, by industry in which they operate and in accordance with NACE Rev. 2, into two groups: industrial clusters and service clusters. In these two groups, differences between financing them were subsequently analysed. While no statistically significant differences were recorded between the total share of public sources and private sources in the budgets of industrial clusters and service clusters (44.21% to 42.12% for public sources and 55.79% to 57.88% for private sources), a more detailed analysis (using the SUR model) revealed statistically significant differences between industrial clusters and service clusters for two types of public sources used by the clusters most often. These sources are the European Union budgets (EU funds to finance cluster activities) and the national budgets (national/governmental funds).

• Details
• Contents